VIZIO VP42 review (42" plasma TV)

Adjusting the Vizio for optimum picture quality in our darkened room, we really appreciated the ability to tweak the color temperature beyond the standard presets--of which Cool was strangely the most accurate--usually it's the Warm setting. Using those controls, we were able to get the TV quite close to the 6,500K standard. It could have been even closer if we had more controls; the Vizio offers three sliders for fine tuning color temperature, whereas six is ideal. We attenuated light output around 40 footlambert (ftl), which we've found to be a nice, medium brightness for dark rooms, and sat back to check out the set's image.

For comparison purposes this time around, we used the new Panaonic TH-42PX77U plasma in addition to our reference Pioneer PRO-FHD1 plasma. We compared the three using the Batman Begins HD DVD played via the Toshiba HD-A1at 1080i resolution.

For the most part, the Vizio VP42HDTV held its own against the Panasonic. The latter did produce a visibly deeper color of black, but the difference in the letterbox bars and shadowy areas, such as the recesses of the cell where Liam Neeson interrogates Christian Bale, wasn't drastic. The one area where the other plasmas had a clear advantage over the Vizio, however, was in shadow detail. We could see more in those recesses, for example--more of the bricks in the wall, more texture in Bale's prison shirt and Neeson's necktie, more detail in the hair of both men. We can often achieve better shadow detail by increasing the brightness, at the expense of black level, but in the case of the VP42HDTV that doesn't work.

As we mentioned above, the VP42HDTV exhibited relatively accurate color and a mostly linear grayscale. In other words, the color of gray--the basis for all colors--remains pretty consistent in the darkest areas up through the lightest. It did tend toward red a bit in the darkest areas, tingeing the shadowed face of Bale's father at the bottom of the family well, for example, a bit redder than on the very accurate Pioneer, but the effect was easy to counter by lowering the color control somewhat. This did reduce saturation slightly, so scenes with a lot of bright colors, such as the intro in the Wayne garden, had slightly less impact than on the Pioneer, but overall color decoding and primary colors were accurate. The exception, as usual, was the color of green; the grass along the runway when Bruce boards his jet after ninja training, for example, appeared a bit too yellowish-blue compared to that of the Pioneer.

We've recently begun using the new HQV Benchmark on HD DVD to test TVs' ability to correctly implement film mode detection with 1080i sources, and the Vizio (as well as the Panasonic) failed this test. It was more difficult, of course, to see the results of this failure in real material. We looked hard at some of the most highly detailed shots in the film, such as the flyover of Gotham in the beginning of Chapter 7, and the Vizio performed well, showing plenty of detail in the tiny building windows and elevated trains. As expected the Pioneer looked a bit sharper, especially from our 7-foot seating distance, than the other two, but it has a higher native resolution than either of the others.

We did notice the VP42HDTV's excessive edge enhancement, however. Even with the sharpness control reduced to zero, the television showed exaggerated edges around lines in test patterns. This also came across in the film, for example in Bruce Wayne's houndstooth overcoat, where the pattern stood out a bit unnaturally. It was most obvious in text and overlays, however, such as the edges of the white letters in the disc's popup menu.

One area where the Vizio soundly beat the Panasonic was in the important false contouring contest. The Panasonic evinced distinct edges in the halo of light around his glow stick in the bat cave, for example, while the Vizio had much more subtle gradations from the bright light to the darkness (but not quite as subtle as natural as the Pioneer's). The edge of Bale's face, where again a contour appeared on the Panasonic, was smoother on the Vizio. The shadows also looked somewhat less noisy on the Vizio than on the Panasonic.

For some reason, the V42PHDTV emitted a quiet, high-pitched whine, the kind of noise we've heard from CRTs that scan at 15kHz. It's unusual in a plasma or any non-CRT, but we doubt anyone but the most sensitive will find it distracting.

We also checked out the Vizio's standard-def video quality, and the results were mostly good. It delivered all the horizontal and vertical resolution of the DVD format, quickly engaged 2:3 pull-down processing, and smoothed out the jagged edges from moving diagonal lines as well as any display we've tested. Details were solid, although as we mentioned above, edge enhancement was still prevalent. The Vizio offers three strengths of noise reduction, but to our eyes it was difficult to discern the effect of the first two. The last, called Strong, eliminated most of the moving motes of noise and generally cleaned up the shots of sky and trees well. We'd have liked to see somewhat more aggressive NR on the motion shots with the roller coaster, but that's a small complaint.

As a PC monitor, the VP42HDTV performed perfectly well. We connected a laptop to its VGA-style RGB input and set the output resolution at 1,024x768 to match the display. According to DisplayMate, the Vizio resolved every line of detail, and text looked crisp, although we wouldn't recommend going lower than 12-point font at this screen size and resolution.